


Flowers for Brobot

by DragonBandit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Robot Feels, Technically there are pairings but none of them are mentioned or make an appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brobot finds seeds on the side of the road. <br/>Part of "The Gift of Life is Thine"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowers for Brobot

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Gift of Life is Thine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1305721) by [DragonBandit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit). 



> Unedited. Expect it to change slightly after I revise it.

It starts with a packet of seeds discarded on the sidewalk. They’re unlabelled. In a clear plastic bag that has seen better days, and the seeds within it are mismatched. Various shapes and sizes. Obviously belonging to different plants.

Brobot stoops, reaching out carefully and trying not to overbalance as he delicately picks up the small bag. He puts it his pocket, and doesn’t think much else of it for now.

He has more important things to do. It is his turn to get food. Why the rest of his family decided this would be at all a good job for Brobot to carry out, he has no idea. He was a surveillance drone-- not a goods carrier. And anyway, it is not as if he is ever going to willingly eat any of the food on the list Dave the sprite put into his phone.

A phone that he is still not entirely sure how to use. Technology made a lot more sense when it was all in his head-- intuitive in a way that his now distressingly human biology makes impossible. Brobot suspects that the rest of his family are thoroughly fed up by his inability to do even the simplest things regarding devices.

Brobot suspects that the rest of his family is thoroughly fed up with his inability to do anything.

One reason he hadn’t protested too hard when he’d been told to fetch groceries. By himself. He is glad for that, quietly. The others are very loud, and fast. It takes too much effort for Brobot to keep up with them in any sufficient capacity.

The grocery store however is not. Mostly because Brobot does not go to the one he is supposed to, and instead goes to a smaller one that is slightly further away but it not crowded with so many people, and has a lady at the checkout who does not mind that sometimes it takes Brobot a few minutes to work out how to give her the money he owes.

There are windchimes on the door. It smells vaguely of spices-- cinnamon and coriander and a few that Brobot cannot place anymore because his human nose is useless.

The list on his phone directs him to get a variety of things that Brobot dutifully hunts for until the basket is too full for anything more. Noodles, and vegetables in an attempt to be healthy, orange and apple juice, cans of soup, a pie of indeterminate flavour, bacon, mayonnaise, potatoes, and cheese.

The old lady at the counter wears a woolen cardigan and a shirt that says ACDC in capital letters. There are no rings on her fingers, but she does have a gold watch. She looks up at Brobot and smiles. Brobot tries to smile back, not really managing it and places the basket on the counter.

She likes chatting as she works. Cycling through the weather and current events, and isn’t it lovely that soon everyone will be on Holiday. Brobot nods, smiling and occasionally mumbling affirmations. She doesn’t really need him to say much-- Brobot likes that about her.

The packet of seeds falls out of his wallet when Brobot fumbles for change. It must have clung to the side, he thinks, too busy corralling quarters into the zippered pocket that is perhaps slightly too small for it’s purpose now thanks to all the loose change that Brobot isn’t sure what he’s meant to do with.

The old lady though, lights up when she sees it. “I didn’t know you were a gardener, dear,” She says.

 

Brobot hesitates, never sure what to say when he’s been so clearly addressed, “I’m not I--” he cuts himself off, frowning. “Are you?”

“I dabble,” she says dismissively, “Were you thinking of growing these?”

Brobot looks at the package that now stares at him almost accusingly on the counter. In the sidelines of his memory he remembers-- flowers and insects and trees tall enough to touch the sun (Not matter what Hal had said about that assumption). Growing and green and so vastly different from the metal concrete that he’s suffocating in now.

“I don’t know how to. I’ve never grown anything before.” Brobot says, trapped in memories of red flowers and an island he can never go back to.

The lady smiles, “Wait here,” She orders. Brobot watches as she bustles up to the back of the store. She lives in the apartment above, he recalls from an earlier conversation. Her daughter keeps trying to make her move in with her, but the lady sees no reason to since she feels as fit as she always does. And anyway, her daughter lives on the other side of town, so it would be highly inconvenient since there is the shop to take care of.

She returns with a bag. Filled with tools that Brobot only barely recognises, a book and a plastic bag that smells like dirt. She offers it to him, and refuses to take it back when Brobot looks at her pleadingly. She doesn’t accept money for it either.

“You can pay me back with pictures of your garden,” She smiles, “The book will tell you what to do. And these days there’s always the internet if you get too stuck.”

All Brobot can really do is nod, confused and grateful and something in his chest tightening around where his heart used to be.

He walks home with two bags: groceries and gift held in either hand. The seeds are tucked into the bag that doesn’t hold the groceries, along with some other seeds that are apparently easier to grow.

“If I’m right about what some of those ones are anyway,” the lady had said, ushering Brobot out the door before he could span enough processes together to protest about the gift further, “Happy growing.”

Now that Brobot is too far away to turn back, he looks down at the bag of gardening supplies and blinks slowly at it. As if that will help it make sense. It doesn’t. It never does-- Nothing ever makes sense these days. Not since he stopped being made out of metal.

They don’t have a garden. Brobot doesn’t have anywhere to grow these. He doubts his room, being shared already (they don’t trust him alone, he doesn’t blame them) is a suitable place to turn into a jungle. He should grow the seeds though, he promised to show the lady pictures. He can’t show her pictures if he hasn’t grown anything. and breaking promises is bad.

He promised to protect, he promised to train, he promised to do so many things and none of them-- No.

Where is he going to plant these?

Brobot fixates on that question for the rest of the walk home. A trek that has thankfully become somewhat of a routine now that he’s learned how to avoid every single major road between the main street and the apartment. It makes the journey take almost twice as long, but it stops the headache that always occurs when Brobot gets close to a car.

He may not be literally built of protocols anymore, but self preservation is thankfully a human instinct as well as a robotic law.

It is easier to go through the alleys than it is to walk next to the highway and pretend that he is not shaking with the noise of every car that streaks past.

Of course, even if he avoids the headache of transit, there is never any way to avoid the headache of too many Striders accosting him as soon as he gets through the front door. Today there are four. Bros beta and alpha, Squarewave and Dave the original. There are words, many of them. Most of them in jargon that Brobot does not understand.

He never understand this, this flow and ebb that the rest of them seem to have internalised, and this level of pure stuff that he can never slow down fast enough to respond to. Out of frustration, Brobot shoves the bag of groceries into the nearest set of hands and escapes to the one place he’s guaranteed to get some quiet: the roof.

Brobot is sure that it is technically out of bounds. Brobot is also sure that the landlord has given up trying to get Striders to obey the rules. (There is a 90% chance that the landlord is Bro the alpha and thus this point becomes somewhat worthless but it is only 90% and Brobot does not have the capabilities to be sure if that is the actual percentage or one he made up anymore)

The roof though is sunny. A slight breeze lifting at the strings of Brobot’s hoodie. The one he was created in, and the one he insists on wearing. It is his shell. It even has the exposed panelling. He was once metal and uranium. They cannot take that away from him completely.

And they cannot take away this. This one place where there is quiet. Some level of peace. He’s too high up for anything but dragons to attack and all the dragons died with the island.

The roof is sunny. Brobot looks down at the bag still clutched in his hand in consideration.

It can’t be too difficult. The island managed it well without any sort of human intervention. He has all the things. He even has a book.

He did promise to take pictures.

It can’t be too difficult.

Brobot sits in the shade of the stairwell, and carefully, cautiously, starts reading.

Two weeks later and Brobot finds that it is a lot harder than he expected. Plants have this annoying tendency to die that he does not understand. He follows the book as best as he can, he makes sure that the plant get enough water and light and space. Still he ends up with withered, yellow leaves.

He is following the book. His plants should not die. He is following the book. He is not doing anything wrong.

And yet. All he has to show are plastic pots that have nothing inside of them. Just goes to show, he is nothing more than a destroyer. Nothing more than a metal automaton made for a boy who didn’t want him.

Brobot resists the urge to knock over the withered plant.

He must be doing something wrong. Maybe the book is wrong. Maybe the seeds are wrong. Maybe the soil is, maybe--

Maybe he is wrong.

He avoids the rooftop.

 

 


End file.
